Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Moscow Unable to Block Illegal Immigration, a Source of Terrorism that is Taking Jobs Russians had Held, Patrushev Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 7 – Even though
polls suggest that most Russians would like to reduce the number of
gastarbeiters among them, Russian officials routinely say that the country’s
economy needs these workers because there are now too few Russians entering the
workforce as a result of domestic demographic decline.

Speaking in Yakutsk at a Security
Council meeting devoted to issues in the Far Eastern Federal District,
Patrushev admitted that Russian officials had not yet succeeded in “significantly
reducing illegal immigration which ‘threatens the provision of public security’”
and creates conditions for terrorism, cross-border crime, and “the criminalization
of economic relations.”

He suggested that migrants “are ever
more often using false documents” of various kinds and noted that “these
challenges and threats are [especially] important” for the Russian Far East
where the low density of the population and the flight of the indigenous
population creates even more demand from labor, even from abroad, something
that only accelerates Russian flight.